Although Modern Family doesn’t end its 11th season run until April, the cast has already wrapped up filming and said their emotional goodbyes. That means it’s time for a change—at least for the Dunphy kids who grew up on the show. Ariel Winter went for strawberry blonde hair, a huge change from the black strands she sports on TV. This isn’t the first time she’s gone red, though. When not working, she often tries a shade that resembles another famous Ariel. The mermaid kind.
“I’m a strawberry and a shortcake sooooo new nickname?” Winter wrote on Instagram. She captioned a photo of her bright new ‘do. She showed off the color in an Instagram video, shaking it out so fans could see how it starts redder at the top and gets blonder towards the ends. It’s a natural-looking red as if she was born with it. In fact, Winter wasn’t born with dark-brown or black hair, either. She’s been dyeing her naturally dirty blonde hair darker since she got the show at just 11 years old.
Winter’s fresh look is courtesy of Tabitha Dueñas, a master stylist at Nine Zero One salon in Los Angeles. “With Modern Family‘s long run ending, Ariel is finally free to have the hair color she wants,” Dueñas said in a statement. “She wanted to strip out the black and go back to her strawberry golden blonde look we had done previously when she was on break from filming. She said she never wants to go back to black again.”
It took a whopping seven hours to remove Winter’s black hair with color remover and then using lightening cream for multiple rounds. Although all the dye Dueñas used is ammonia-free, she still needed to do a strengthening and nourishing treatment to keep Winter’s hair healthy. She finished Winter’s service with the In Common Crystal Cashmere Treatment, an in-salon, two-step treatment for those with weak or brittle hair. “Her hair feels as good as it does it did before we colored it,” added Dueñas.
Winter looks gorgeous with her new hair color but don’t try this kind of transformation at home—leave it to the pros.